remember
by vapanalley
Summary: /RenxJeanne/ She's laughing at him. Her quiet, sad laugh echoes like church bells. Her laugh is a little off tune but still beautiful and stately.


A/N: Chemistry test? What are you talking about? Quick one-shot with verb tense problems.

Disclaimer: Do not own, do not make a profit from, am having fun.

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She's laughing at him. Her quiet, sad laugh echoes like church bells. Her laugh is a little off tune but still beautiful and stately. Jeanne's expression eventually returns to a calmer state but her eyes sparkle and her lips are curved into a small smile as they stand in front of a priest in a sea of red.

"It was such a beautiful wedding." She whispers to him later as their limbs are tangled together within sheets of red silk and heavy gold embroidery thread. Their marriage bed was raised on a frame of mahogany wood covered with a glossy finish previously made up with silken red covers. None of those pretty details were obvious in the dark as they lay together. Their breathing is lazy and slow and neither of them with any inclination to move.

There had been a compromise in regards to their wedlock. Ren's family agreed to hold the ceremony in a church, but they also insisted on being in charge of the decorating and organized a traditional marriage procession afterwards. Jeanne had barely lifted a finger aside from choosing certain ornaments and centerpieces that Jun described to her. She had laughed when Ren asked her about it and said the ceremony hardly mattered as long as it was watched by God and approved by his family.

"Jun did a great job." She continues in a whisper.

The ground had been covered with the petals of red flowers and the soft light of twilight streaming through the gilded windows of the church made for an almost ethereal ceremony. Everyone had been dressed in red for good luck and Jun had even managed to gather up a few iron maidens to put into the four corners of the church. Jeanne had agreed to dress in red and pin her hair up with the appropriate hair ornaments. They had been married with traditional Christian vows while they stood before a priest with a traditional red ribbon worn between them to symbolize their union. The procession from Jeanne's "spiritual" home to the Tao's actual home was a long trek with the rebuilt X-Laws trailing behind Jeanne as her family and bridesmaids with an iron maiden trailing along with her to symbolize her dowry. Jun admitted that this was a largely simplified arrangement she had run across with the ancestral ghosts and her father.

"Why are we talking about my sister at a time like this?" Ren whispers. His bangs fall into his eyes and he blows at them in a futile attempt to move them. Jeanne just giggles and runs a hand through his hair.

"Are you just growing your hair out to spite Yoh? Still trying to out do him, right?" Jeanne says with a playful lilt to her voice. She moves closer so that there was no more space between their bodies and fits her head into the groove of Ren's collarbone.

"You're picking the strangest people to talk about." Ren mutters into her hair. Jeanne looks up at him through the darkness and smiles again. She was smiling a lot today. She could feel this happy spring bubbling in her heart and she couldn't help but feel so, so blessed. Like a child, she was delighted with all these new and _good_ things that were happening to her. Three years wasn't a long time to amass good fortune, but she felt like this was all such a lovely start.

"I think our son is going to have my eyes." She whispers into the dark. Ren's eyes had closed for a moment but they all but fly open and are like amber as they regard her in his intense way.

"Then he should have your hair also. Imagine him with red eyes and black hair." He laughs and nips at her shoulder. Jeanne swats at him good naturedly and tangles her hands in his hair for a kiss. His hair is shoulder length and it's soft without the amount of styling product that he used to put into it.

"I bet he'll look like you though."

"Really now, don't speculate certainties, Jeanne." Ren whispers.

She laughs aloud. She knows that there's going to be so much rebuilding and trouble and pain to come. Because that is what life is made up of. These moments like blood dripping from the face of an iron maiden full of pain and sacrifice and _joy_. She doesn't want this to end. She wants to stay in this moment forever like a tear suspended on the bridge of a nose or the edge of a cheek. Just to stay for longer than anything divine could possibly allow, so she could savor all of this. So she reaps the rewards for her sacrifice and thinks that every moment was worth it.

She reaches out and kisses Ren again with her fingers gliding down the smooth length of his back, trying to trace the symbols decorating his back. Trying to trace all of this and _remember_.


End file.
